Blogroll | Communications of the ACM

From My Biased Coin

Harvard CS Concentrators Jump Again

During my time as Area Dean for computer science, the number of computer science majors at Harvard more than doubled. Growth has continued, and according to the... Michael Mitzenmacher
From My Biased Coin | November 16, 2017 at 09:02 AM

From The Noisy Channel

Better Search through Better Queries

I spend a lot of time helping companies improve their search engines. Much of my work involves returning better results for their users’ search queries. But there... Daniel Tunkelang
From The Noisy Channel | November 10, 2017 at 01:07 PM

From My Biased Coin

BARC, Copenhagen

A few summers ago, I had an opportunity to visit Copenhagen, and work with Rasmus Pagh for a month. I (and the family) liked it so much we went back the nextAarhus... Michael Mitzenmacher
From My Biased Coin | November 9, 2017 at 08:02 AM

From The Noisy Channel

Personalization

In 1964, information science pioneer William Goffman said:Relevance is defined as a measure of information conveyed by a document relative to a query…[but] thecontext... Daniel Tunkelang
From The Noisy Channel | November 6, 2017 at 08:01 AM

From The Noisy Channel

Thanks Andrei. Indeed, there’s a lot more to seasonality than I covered in this post.

Thanks Andrei. Indeed, there’s a lot more to seasonality than I covered in this post. Daniel Tunkelang
From The Noisy Channel | October 30, 2017 at 11:09 PM

From The Noisy Channel

Seasonality

Whether it’s the time of year or the time of day, the time when someone performs a search sometimes help us determine the searcher’s intent. As with location, it... Daniel Tunkelang
From The Noisy Channel | October 30, 2017 at 05:45 PM

From The Noisy Channel

Geographical Context

Location often provides a strong signal of searcher intent. Sometimes location acts as an implicit part of the search query, such as when people are searching for... Daniel Tunkelang
From The Noisy Channel | October 23, 2017 at 04:54 PM

From The Noisy Channel

Thanks, glad you like it!

Thanks, glad you like it! Daniel Tunkelang
From The Noisy Channel | October 22, 2017 at 10:33 PM

From The Noisy Channel

To Build Better Search, Develop Empathy With Your Users

User experience designers recognize the importance of empathy in the design process. Understanding how and why users engage with products yields insights that help... Daniel Tunkelang
From The Noisy Channel | October 16, 2017 at 10:38 AM

From The Noisy Channel

Session Context

The most immediate context for a search query is a search session, a sequence of activities the searcher performs in order to pursue an information-seeking task... Daniel Tunkelang
From The Noisy Channel | October 9, 2017 at 10:53 AM

From The Noisy Channel

Why Voice isn’t Selling…Yet

Originally published in VentureBeat.Personal digital assistants have taken the world by storm. We have Siri and Google Assistant on our phones, and many of us have... Daniel Tunkelang
From The Noisy Channel | October 4, 2017 at 11:21 AM

From The Noisy Channel

Evaluating Search: Using Human Judgement

Originally posted on the Twiggle blog.In the previous post, we looked at measuring searcher behavior in order to evaluate search engine performance. Measuring searcher... Daniel Tunkelang
From The Noisy Channel | October 1, 2017 at 10:08 PM

From The Noisy Channel

Evaluating Search: Measuring Searcher Behavior

Originally posted on the Twiggle blog.Measuring the effectiveness of your search engine is hard. Fortunately, you have an army of volunteers helping you: your customers... Daniel Tunkelang
From The Noisy Channel | October 1, 2017 at 10:01 PM

From The Noisy Channel

Evaluating Good Search (Part I): Measure It

Originally posted on the Twiggle blog.At Twiggle, we’re all about improving the search experience. But how do we define improvement? As Lord Kelvin, one of history... Daniel Tunkelang
From The Noisy Channel | October 1, 2017 at 09:15 PM

From The Noisy Channel

Contextual Query Understanding

So far, we’ve focused on understanding searchers based entirely on the words they type into the search box. But search doesn’t occur in a vacuum. In the next posts... Daniel Tunkelang
From The Noisy Channel | September 11, 2017 at 08:12 PM

From My Biased Coin

Simulated Annealing for JPEG Quantization

I have a new paper on the arxiv (web page describing results, and full version** available) with two Harvard undergrads, Max Hopkins and Sebastian Wagner-Carrena... Michael Mitzenmacher
From My Biased Coin | September 6, 2017 at 09:56 AM

From My Biased Coin

Grace Hopper College

I hadn't seen the news about Yale renaming Calhoun College to Hopper College; it just popped into one of my newslines here in the New York times. I guess I hadn't... Michael Mitzenmacher
From My Biased Coin | September 5, 2017 at 02:06 PM

From The Noisy Channel

10 Things Everyone Should Know About Machine Learning

As someone who often finds himself explaining machine learning to non-experts, I offer the following list as a public service announcement. Machine learning means... Daniel Tunkelang
From The Noisy Channel | September 5, 2017 at 01:34 PM

From The Noisy Channel

Autocomplete and User Experience

The previous post focused on how to determine the best autocomplete suggestions based on query probability and query performance. In this post, we’ll dive intoscope... Daniel Tunkelang
From The Noisy Channel | September 1, 2017 at 05:03 PM

From The Noisy Channel

You’re absolutely right about the number of suggestions, of course.

You’re absolutely right about the number of suggestions, of course. And it’s a good reminder that autocomplete user experience deserves its own post, which I promise... Daniel Tunkelang
From The Noisy Channel | August 28, 2017 at 05:07 PM